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Friday, August 25, 2006
Ouano offers help for PNP recruits
Mayor Thadeo Ouano has committed to give a P500 monthly allowance to each rookie policeman deployed in Mandaue City to augment the security forces for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in December.
He wants to promote Mandaue as a peaceful and “gunless society,” so the mayor is encouraging the police not to carry long firearms.
At least 99 police recruits from the Police Regional Office (PRO) 8 who are undergoing field training were formally turned over to the Mandaue City Police Office (MCPO) yesterday.
This brings the total number of police recruits in Mandaue to 229, including 26 policewomen.
Last week, 96 policemen from the PRO 11 arrived in Mandaue, while 34 others from the PRO 7 were deployed last May.
Ouano said he has asked the City Council to authorize him to grant a monthly allowance for these new policemen since they are not covered under the City’s budget for the monthly incentives given to all policemen in Mandaue.
MCPO Director Eduardo Catabas said the policemen from PRO 11 are temporarily housed inside the Mandaue City Sports Complex across the MCPO headquarters.
Arrangements
The contingent from PRO 8 will be housed at the Subangdaku Sports Complex.
But Catabas said he will still discuss with Ouano the housing arrangement for the new police recruits, considering that the sports complex also has bookings for certain events between now and December.
Ouano told Sun.Star yesterday that the City Government will try to make their stay in Mandaue City as comfortable as possible.
He said the policemen can use the City’s 300 sleeping mats, which were purchased when Mandaue hosted the Central Visayas regional athletics meet a few years ago.
Health watch
Councilor Wenceslao Gakit, who spoke on behalf of the mayor during yesterday’s formal turnover ceremony for the rookie policemen, said the City Health Office had already been instructed to monitor the health of these new policemen and to give them medicines during their stay in Mandaue.
Catabas said he will first organize these new policemen into teams but within the next three days, they will already be visible all over the city.
He said among they will be asked to secure vital installations such as the two Mandaue-Mactan bridges, the Cebu International Convention Center, the unfinished Uniwide building where the vehicles to be used for the Asean summit are being parked, Cebu North Bus Terminal, Subangdaku and Maguikay flyovers and roads.
Nightsticks
Despite security preparations for the Asean summit, Catabas said routine police work in Mandaue will not be affected because of the police augmentation.
Ouano believes that what the police recruits need are just a whistle, nightstick, handcuffs and radio.
They should leave the long firearms to highly trained police like those from the Special Weapons and Tactics, he said.
Ouano said the training for these new policemen should be community-oriented, focusing on turning them into “tourist police.”
“I always envy other countries whose police officers merely carry nightsticks. If your policemen don’t carry guns at all, it only means that your place is so peaceful that there is no need for firearms,” Ouano said in Cebuano. (ROV)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 25, 2006 issue)
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